Positively glo-ing with deals

If there’s one thing Singaporeans love more than shopping, it’s great shopping deals. If you’re Singaporean, love shopping and use a smartphone, check out glo (http://www.glo.asia/) – it’s a mobile discount application that helps you find discounts and promotions throughout Singapore. Users can locate the best deals from retailers, lifestyle destinations and other service providers according to their preferences, or based on location. The offers can be downloaded to most smartphones – iPhones, Android-based phones and Blackberrys – and stored, and so are available for redemption even without Internet access, so it’s just like physical coupons except it’s far more convenient and saves trees.

“All of us love great deals, but absolutely dislike cutting out and remembering to bring along paper coupons and vouchers when redeeming the offers,” says Koh Tze Wei, director and co-founder of glo, explaining the inspiration behind the service.

Retailers who sign up use an interactive platform where they have full control over their promotions, such as fixing the number of mobile coupons that are available to consumers, the duration of each campaign, to tracking when and where redemptions are made. They can update their promotions in near real-time, and pay only for measurable results.

glo launched before Chinese New Year, and have signed up various major retailers such as Estetica, Frasers Centrepoint Malls, Lawry’s The Prime Rib, O’Briens, Timezone, and True Fitness, and is continuing to add more retailers to its retailer portfolio. The company aims to extend the service to at least three other countries in Southeast Asia before the end of the year.

“We will (also) be further enhancing glo over time to allow consumers to make payments via their mobile phone, including support for near-field communications (NFC) payments,” adds Koh. “Consumers will then be able to use their phones – both to enjoy discounts and make payments.”

The company is also trying to be a socially responsible company – it is currently exploring the hiring and training of physically-disabled people to add to its workforce.

Daniel Goh is the founder and chief editor of Young | Upstarts, as well as an F&B entrepreneur. Daniel has a background in public relations, and is interested in issues in entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, public relations and the online space. He can be reached at daniel [at] youngupstarts [dot] com.